Panpan : Streetwalking in Occupied Japan
Author(s): Holly Sanders
Source: Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 81, No. 3 (August 2012), pp. 404-431
Published by: University of California Press
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Panpan:
Streetwalking in Occupied Japan
HOLLY SANDERS
The author is a member of the history department at Villanova University.
This article explores sex markets in Occupied Japan. These operated under a legal
regime distinct from traditional pleasure quarters and provided wage labor. There,
streetwalkers, or panpan, had unprecedented control over their work. Many came
from the middle class and formed women-led gangs that resembled criminal syndicates. The former especially concerned social scientists and mothers in postwar Japan.
Calls to sanitize public space to protect Japanese children increasingly dominated public
discourse about the U.S. military bases. By 1953 new regulations forced panpan into
brothels where they lost the control over their labor they had enjoyed during the Occupation (1945–1952). This article also suggests that reactions to base prostitution in
Occupied Japan paralleled those in the United States during the war.
Key words: prostitution, U.S. military, Occupied Japan, sex work, women workers,
children’s rights
Pleasure quarters of the past had order, they were out of public view. The
word “licensed prostitute” (shōgi) does not convey the social ills, disorder
and seduction bound up with the term prostitution. Rather, people think
all those things apply to the word panpan.1
During the U.S. Occupation, the Japanese used the word
panpan to refer to prostitutes who violated the conventions of a
well-ordered sex industry by selling sex in the open: on the streets,
in movie theaters, in bars and cabarets. This visibility jarred the
public and was a departure from the past. Streetwalkers had occupied a specific place in elaborate taxonomies of prostitutes, although not a prominent one. The modern licensed system and its
Tokugawa predecessor had kept streetwalkers at the bottom of the
hierarchy, below the various ranks of geisha and prostitutes working in teahouses, brothels, and inns. References to streetwalkers in
1. Kokuritsu Yoron Chōsajo, ed., Fūki ni kansuru seron chōsa [Public opinion survey on public morals] (Tokyo, 1949), 1–2. All translations are by the author.
404
Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 81, No. 3, pages 404–431. ISSN 0030-8684
© 2012 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the
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Streetwalkers in Occupied Japan
405
print media are scant, perhaps because, as cultural historian Inoue Shōichi noted, Japanese men preferred indoor sexual liasions.
The preference was so entrenched that men found ways to engage
prostitutes away from the eyes of strangers even in the days and
weeks after Japan’s surrender. American servicemen brought with
them a new attitude toward “the space of love”—one that encouraged street prostitution.2
Panpan drew criticism and admiration for their exuberant sexuality. Kanzaki Kiyoshi explained: “The street girl (sutoriito gaaru)
walks in daytime, arms linked with American servicemen, unapologetically bold. She has no scruples about what others think. Her
conduct is different from [street prostitutes] of the past.”3 Kanzaki,
a prolific writer on prostitution in the postwar era, distilled the
anxiety felt by many Japanese about the public nature of panpan
eroticism, which was a departure from, and a threat to, the customs of the brothel.
The street market for sex was run by women. It coexisted with
a vast regulated and quasi-regulated market based on brothels
controlled by proprietors. Unlike prostitutes confined to brothels
by law, force, or a combination of both, panpan moved freely, monopolized negotiations with customers, and had no obligation to
split their earnings with a manager. In this sense, they dictated the
terms of their labor, making such women an anomaly in Japanese
and modern world history. Despite the policies of Japanese authorities and the Supreme Commander for Allied Powers (SCAP) designed to restrict them, panpan attained economic power and the
status of cultural icons.
Scholars have focused on the ways in which SCAP and Japanese authorities cooperated to manage prostitutes for American
2. For more on sexual customs, see Inoue Shōichi, Ai no kūkan [The space of
love] (Tokyo, 1999).
3. Kanzaki Kiyoshi, “Gaishōron” [On streetwalkers], in Kanzaki Kiyoshi, Yoru no
kichi [Base at night] (Tokyo 1953), 216. For more on taxonomies, see Sarah Kovner,
“Base Cultures: Sex Workers and Servicemen in Occupied Japan,” Journal of Asian Studies, 68 (2009), 777–804. Taxonomies of prostitutes were not unique to the Occupation. For reports of streetwalkers in Japan before the war, see Watanabe Yōji, Gaishō
no shakaigakuteki kenkyū [Sociological research on streetwalkers] (Tokyo, 1950), 18–20,
and Tanabe Shigeko, “Baishōfu to hōritsu” [Prostitutes and the law], Fujin no seiki
[Century of women], 8 (Feb. 1949; 1995) 123–129. Japanese names in the text and
notes are written in Japanese style, with the family name first, except when a name is
cited otherwise in an English title.
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Pacific Historical Review
forces and, more broadly, to control the sexuality of Japanese
women. However tight their bonds might have been, and however
traumatic “the structural violence of the Occupation on women,”
as historian Hirai Kazuko called it, the U.S.-Japanese coalition
could not stop women from building a vibrant street market for sex
during the first half of the Occupation.4
Streetwalkers made up the largest and best-known contingent of the prostitutes known as panpan.5 Another contingent included the prostitutes recruited by the Japanese state to “comfort”
the occupiers.6 The construction of brothels for the U.S. forces
began within days of Japan’s surrender, when the Higashikuni
Cabinet asked prominent brothel keepers to prepare for the arrival of occupying forces. Brothel keepers formed the Recreation
and Amusement Association (RAA).7 This consortium of brothels, cabarets, and beer halls opened in time for the landing of the
4. In “RAA to akasen,” Hirai Kazuko asked, “How did structural violence work
on women who made it possible to frame the Occupation as a ‘success’ and ‘peaceful’?” She argued that violence worked through the Recreation and Amusement Association (RAA) and quasi-legal pleasure quarters, which opened after the RAA
brothels shut down. Hirai Kazuko, “RAA to akasen: Atami ni okeru tenkai” [The RAA
and the red-line districts: The development at Atami], in Okuda Akiko, ed., Senryō to
sei: seisaku, jittai, hyōshō (Tokyo, 2007), 79–118.
5. The number of streetwalkers varied by year and by who did the counting.
Kanzaki Kiyoshi claimed panpan numbered 50,000 in 1950. The Ministry of Justice
counted 30,000 in 1957, a year when the total number of prostitutes was pegged at
130,000. Both figures likely underestimated the total, for streetwalkers moved frequently and may have chosen not to identify with the label. See Ministry of Justice,
Materials Concerning Prostitution and its Control in Japan (Tokyo, 1957).
6. Hirai used panpan to refer to women who worked in the RAA or red-line districts. Using panpan in this way highlights the coordination between Japanese proprietors, bureaucrats, and SCAP, but it does not clarify the realm of the streetwalker and
her importance to the economy and society. See Hirai, “RAA to akasen,” and Hirai,
“Nihon senryō wo sei de minaosu” [A new look at the Occupation of Japan through
sex], Rekishigaku Kenkyū, 500 (2004), 107–130.
7. For more on the RAA and managed prostitution during the Occupation, see
Duus Masayo, Haisha no okurimono: kokusaku ianfu o meguru senryōka hishi [The gift
from the defeated: The secret history of the state policy for “comfort women” during the Occupation] (Tokyo, 1979), and Kobayashi Daijirō and Murase Akira, Minna
ha shiranai: kokka baishun meirei [Nobody knows: The state orders prostitution] (Tokyo, 1992). More recent works are Hirai Kazuko, cited in notes 4 and 6, and Hayakawa
Noriyo, “Senryōgun heishi no ian to baibaishunsei no saihen” [The “comfort” of Occupation soldiers and the reorganization of the prostitution system], in Okuda, ed.,
Senryō to sei, 45–78. In English, see John Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of
World War II (New York, 1999); Mire Koikari, The Pedagogy of Democracy: Feminism and
the Cold War in the U.S. Occupation of Japan (Philadelphia, 2007); and Kovner, “Base
Cultures.” Kanzaki critiqued the workings of the RAA in his 1953 essay “Gaishōron.”
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first U.S. forces at the end of August 1945. SCAP closed the wildly
popular RAA brothels in March 1946 due to high rates of sexually
transmitted disease. Some RAA prostitutes then moved into brothels in pleasure quarters opened to servicemen.8
Others joined streetwalkers already at work. While SCAP
and the Japanese authorities were building both RAA brothels
and public health policies to regulate the sexuality of Japanese
women during the volatile first six months of the Occupation,
women workers themselves were constructing a street market for
sex. Kanzaki Kiyoshi reckoned that the first streetwalkers came
from the ranks of the homeless who lived in the Tokyo subway system. Other contemporary reports confirm that the street market
emerged in this time of flux. U.S. forces moved into Tachikawa
air force base on the outskirts of Tokyo in early September 1945.
Within three weeks 120 prostitutes joined them, apparently former geisha and “comfort women” of Japanese soldiers. Panpan
working in Yokohama’s parks numbered as many as 2,000 to 3,000
in November. Women struggling to survive through the earliest
months of the Occupation developed the customs of the street
market for sex, which became the realm of the panpan.9
American authorities freed prostitutes from contractual prostitution in brothels in January 1946 with the bold policy stated in
SCAPIN 642, but this did not dampen their enthusiasm for managing prostitution behind the scenes. The closure of the RAA
8. This article uses “pleasure quarters” as a general term for districts of sexual
commerce run by small business proprietors and “brothel prostitute” for a prostitute
who worked for a proprietor. Brothel prostitutes had many names and different degrees of recognition from authorities (or none at all). I argue that, from a labor history perspective, the differences between streetwalkers and brothel prostitutes as a
class were greater than the differences among brothel prostitutes because brothel prostitutes were controlled by proprietors who often doubled as creditors.
9. Hirai argued that the closure of the R A A created panpan. See Hirai, “Sei
de minaosu,” 109; however, the street market developed in the first six months of
the Occupation, in spite of the formation of the R A A and SCAP’s public health
policies. Observations of streetwalkers in the first months of the Ocupation come
from Kanzaki, “Gaishōron,” 221; Nishida Minoru, Kichi no Onna [Women of the
base] (Tokyo 1953), 123–124; and a Kanagawa prefectural official, quoted in
Izuoka Manabu, “Karikomi to seibyōin: sengo Kanagawa no seiseisaku” [Mass arrests and sexually transmitted disease hospitals: Postwar Kanagawa sex policy],
in Okuda, ed. Senryō to Sei, 120–121. In addition, there were streetwalkers in
Tachikawa and Hibiya in Tokyo from September 1945, according to Duus, Haisha
no okurimono, cited in Hayakawa, “Senryōgun heishi no ian to baibaishunsei no
saihen.”
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Pacific Historical Review
the following March began a new phase of cooperation between
SCAP and the Japanese to confine prostitution to areas that had
served as licensed pleasure quarters before the war. The police
named these areas the red- and blue-line districts.10 These plans
did not deter panpan or stymie the growth of street prostitution.
Police affidavits, reportage, and studies by frustrated scholars show
that panpan undermined plans to restrict sexual commerce to businesses in designated neighborhoods. Former RAA prostitutes who
turned to the streets to make ends meet thus entered an already vibrant marketplace, created by women who had ignored the orders
issued by the U.S. and Japanese authorities after Japan’s surrender.
The Supreme Commander himself recognized the limitations of policy as a tool for containing “fraternization,” a word that
had replaced the better known “f word” for sexual intercourse, at
least in Occupied Germany. An aide to Gen. Douglas MacArthur
recalled:
Suddenly we passed a G.I. embracing a Japanese girl, hotly. “Look at
that,” the General said. “They keep trying to get me to stop all this Madame Butterflying around, too. I won’t do it. My father told me never to
give an order unless I was certain it would be carried out. I wouldn’t issue
a no-fraternization order for all the tea in China.”11
Scenes like this might have irked the Supreme Commander, but
they moved Japanese citizens to action. Newly enfranchised women
claimed the mandate to protect neighborhoods that had heretofore been free of prostitution from the incursion of streetwalkers.
They used the language of “children’s rights,” a new way of talking
about public morals that emerged along with the panpan.
Panpan in the immediate postwar period
Panpan and their foreign customers connected in the gray
area between dating and prostitution in bars and public spaces.
This was in line with the practices of U.S. military personnel
stateside and in other parts of the world. Conceived of as female
10. Hirai, “RAA to akasen.”
11. See Faubion Bowers, “The Late General MacArthur, Warts and All,” Esquire
(Jan. 1967), 168. See John Willoughby, “The Sexual Behavior of American GIs during
the Early Years of the Occupation of Germany,” Journal of Military History, 62 (1998),
155–174, especially the first half, for discussion of fraternization.
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409
“delinquency” and “promiscuity,” casual prostitution near bases in
the continental United States was regarded as a threat to national
defense preparedness during World War II. Worriers singled out
the motivations of young women: “Camps and war-production areas have acted as magnets upon young girls who seek adventure,
romance, marriage and economic opportunity.” A supervisor in
the Federal Security Agency opined that “[They] come because
they are escaping a past blindly, caring nothing for an uncertain
future, anxious to live only in the present.”12
The U.S. military had grappled with prostitution near military installations for decades and had arrived at no consensus.
Navy Medical Corps captain Dr. Joel T. Boone laid out one popular view: “If we bear in mind that our armed forces are sexually
aggressive [and] they must be if they are going to be good soldiers
and sailors . . . [w]e can only hope to control and educate.” However, Boone continued, even if prostitution were regulated, “We
cannot stop the so-called amateur competition [from] the girl
on the street who likes a man in uniform.” These descriptions of
American women in war time could have been written by any one
of the self-appointed experts on panpan once streetwalkers became
a familiar sight and topic for analysis in Occupied Japan.
Judging from the orderly establishment, recruiting, and operation of the RAA in the fall of 1945, one might conclude that
the Japanese had a handle on social conditions at the end of the
war. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Confusion
reigned. Civilians and military personnel alike found themselves
alone and far from home when the Emperor’s thin voice announced defeat on August 15. The incendiary bombing campaigns
that the Allies had waged since March leveled over half of all structures in the metropolises of Tokyo and Osaka, and dozens of other
cities suffered comparable or worse destruction. Aerial bombings
of urban centers had rendered 9 million Japanese homeless. The
housing situation stood to worsen before it improved because approximately 6.5 million civilians and military personnel awaited
repatriation from Japan’s overseas territories. Adding to the chaos,
12. Speech delivered by Arthur E. Fink, regional supervisor of the Social Protection Section, Federal Security Agency, which worked with local law enforcement
and welfare agencies on prostitution. See Walter C. Reckless, “The Impact of War
on Crime, Delinquency, and Prostitution,” American Journal of Sociology, 48 (1942),
378–386.
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the first-ever atomic bomb attacks reduced Hiroshima and Nagasaki to rubble on August 6 and 9.13
Young women slipped through tears in the social fabric that
had held them close to their families, even though many had
worked away from home in factories as state-mandated conscript
labor (teishintai) or as servants in the households of the well-to-do.
Morishita Yasuko from Hiroshima told police that she was working
in a Kobe factory as a conscript when she learned that her only living parent, her mother, had died in the bombing of Hiroshima.
Like many others, she made her way to Kyoto, one of the few cities
left standing. Tsuda Keiko reported that she headed for Osaka’s
massive Tennōji black market after her parents perished in a Kobe
air raid. In early 1946, SCAP prohibited travel to cities in order to
curb the number of refugees like these. Japanese authorities cooperated by restricting rice rations to individuals who showed proof
of a local address.14
Regulations did not deter refugees like Morishita and Tsuda
who had nothing to lose. The cities also drew the homeless, who
lived in extralegal limbo in the shadow of black markets where
refugees, legal residents, and comparatively well-off rural families bartered and sold a range of goods from produce to treasured
heirlooms.15 This was a precarious life for women in particular;
unattached men, by contrast, had the option of joining the syndicates that ran the markets. Tsuda, for instance, worked as a cook
in Tennōji’s black market for three months without receiving any
pay. Orphaned and without proof of legal residence in the city, she
turned to streetwalking.
13. See Shiota Maruo, “Haikyo no kazokutachi” [Families of the ruins], in Kawamoto Saburō, ed., Shōwa seikatsu bunka nendaiki (Tokyo, 1991), 48, and “Vast Destruction in Japan Told by Air Generals,” Los Angeles Times, Sept. 4, 1945, p. 2.
14. For the stories of Morishita Yasuko and Tsuda Keiko, see “Gaishō no
kōjutsusho” [Affidavits of streetwalkers], in Takenaka Katsuo and Sumiya Etsuji, eds.,
Gaishō: jittai to sono shuki (Tokyo, 1949), 222 and 234, respectively. See Nishida, Kichi no
onna, 20, 199, 203. SCAPIN 563 outlawed travel from rural areas to cities of 100,000
or more, unless one had permission to travel and proof of a place to live. Prohibitions
on travel extended from early 1946 to January 1949. Rural inhabitants were not issued
ration cards. See Takemae Eiji, Inside GHQ: The Allied Occupation of Japan and Its Legacy
(London, 2000).
15. An estimated 300,000 people worked in Tokyo-area black markets run by
criminal syndicates (tekiya) in 1946. See Ino Kenji, “Yamiichi kaihō-ku koto hajime”
[Start of black market free zones], in Ino Kenji, ed., Tōkyō yamiichi kōbōshi (1978; Tokyo, 1999). For more on the culture of black markets, see Dower, Embracing Defeat.
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Policies cobbled together worked at cross-purposes. This
meant that young women uprooted by the war’s calamities faced
bleak employment prospects in the formal sector. Ota Hatsue
told surveyors a common story. She decided to leave an unstable
home headed by her stepmother and sick father; in exchange for
a ticket to Kyoto, she sold her belongings, including her residency
papers. A private work agency (kuchiireya) referred her to a coffee
shop, which refused to hire her because she lacked the residency
papers necessary for rice rations. Japan had never been congenial
to young women without family ties. Even before the war, orphans
and single women carried with them the taint of “unrespectability.”
The new residency requirement gave employers a legal excuse to
shun them. Soon another policy swelled the number of unemployed
women. Businesses summarily dismissed women workers to create
vacancies for men returning from overseas. Those fortunate enough
to hold onto their jobs earned an average of 45 percent of male
wages. In these conditions, many women chose streetwalking.16
Openness was a hallmark of the street market, distinguishing it from the closed and formal world of the pleasure quarters.
Becoming a streetwalker was comparatively easy. Women could
observe panpan in parks and train stations to learn what the work
entailed. Pleasure quarters, by contrast, discouraged casual female
passers-by. In addition, brothel keepers demanded that prostitutes
sign a contract and sometimes required a guarantor. Despite the
apparent abolition of contractual prostitution by SCAPIN 642 in
January 1946, as well as other American changes to Japanese law,
no revision changed the law of contracts. Japanese appellate courts
had upheld commitments made by women and their guardians
since the turn of the century. This relatively consistent case law
enabled brothel keepers to continue recruiting indentured prostitutes even after the war.17 Unlike brothels, the streets made no
such legally binding demands of women.
16. For Ota Hatsue, see “Gaishō no kōjutsusho,” 264–265. For more on unemployment, see Imaoka Kenichirō and Bō Eiko, “Tokushu fujin no seikatsu to mondai”
[Special women’s lifestyle and problems], in Ōkōchi Kazuo, ed., Sengo shakai no jittai
bunseki (Tokyo, 1950), 290.
17. It would take more than a proclamation by SCAP or even an imperial order
to dissolve a legally binding loan. Not until the Japanese Supreme Court ruled in 1955
to nullify the loan component (shōhisha taishaku) of prostitutes’ labor contracts did
prostitutes begin to gain the upper hand in negotiations with brothel keepers. For one
view of Meiji indentured prostitution, see J. Mark Ramseyer, “Indentured Prostitution
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Easing the transition to streetwalking were female acquaintances, rather than guardians, the usual bridge into prostitution.
The orphans Morishita and Tsuda began entertaining American
servicement at the suggestion of friends. Tsuda reported that she
was fed up with life in the Tennōji black market when she happened to meet a woman working as a panpan. Before long, Tsuda
moved into the same inn as her acquaintance to entertain servicemen. From Tsuda’s perspective, she left an unstable job for an “interesting” and well-paying one.
Like Tsuda in Osaka, Kawada Hiroko in Kyoto claimed her introduction to streetwalking came from a female acquaintance. She
told surveyors that she had admired the style of panpan and had
studied English in order to converse with G.I.s. A chance encounter in Kyoto Station drew her into the trade. Upon finding a lost
wallet, Kawada pursued its owner, who turned out to be a panpan.
The grateful woman thanked Kawada by providing introductions
to foreign men.18
These kinds of transitory relationships also sprouted among
women in hospitals where police quarantined suspected panpan. Hospital inmates had been swept up in “catches” (katchi),
which entailed indiscriminate arrests of women in public places
on suspicion of prostitution. The Japanized English neologism
“katchi” was a word in the patois of G.I.s and panpan, and of the
Japanese and American authorities who implemented the policy.
U.S.-Japanese cooperation on the problem of “venereal disease”
began early in the Occupation. On October 16, 1945, SCAP instructed the Japanese government to test sex workers who had
contact with foreign troops. The Welfare Ministry responded by
preparing the Venereal Disease Prevention Law, which gave local
authorities wide latitude in whom they chose to test. It went into
effect on December 1.19
Unlike the prostitutes in brothels and the RAA, street prostitutes moved freely and could evade the testing order. At the end
of January 1946, military police and their Japanese counterparts
in Imperial Japan: Credible Commitments in the Commercial Sex Industry,” Journal of
Law, Economics, & Organization, 7 (1991), 89–116. See also Holly Sanders, “Indentured
Servitude and the Abolition of Prostitution in Postwar Japan,” USJP Occasional Paper
06-11, Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., 2006.
18. For the story of Kawada Hiroko, see “Gaishō no kōjutsusho,” 227.
19. Fujino, Sei no kokka kanri [State management of sex] (Tokyo, 2001), 177.
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413
began rounding up women in public places. The first raid netted
eighteen women in Tokyo. A much larger haul followed in March,
in which 300 women were arrested.20 Police sent the women they
arrested to hospitals designated for “medical” testing. “Virgins”
earned automatic release, although one doctor admitted that it
was hard to make a conclusive determination of virginity. He and
his colleagues relied on women’s dress and manner of speech to
select which women to release.21 Women who could not convince
doctors of their “sexual purity” were held for three days in the hospital. Carriers of sexually transmitted diseases remained hospitalized until their symptoms subsided.
Catches began to draw criticism by the fall of 1946 for the
frequent, callous arrest of “innocent” women. The arrest and confinement to a hospital of a member of a Tokyo-area labor union
prompted the formation of the Protect the Women Association,
which protested American treatment of “respectable” Japanese
women.22 From the reactions of the women who sold sex, it is clear
that panpan used the hospitals for their own purposes. Police affidavits show that hospitals became sites for networking and places
where novices learned the ways of veterans. The stories of incarcerated women show the ways they subverted the authorities’ desire to
reduce sexually transmitted disease and street prostitution.23
One social welfare expert lamented that women used their
time in the hospital to “practice their ugly ‘special’ skills and expand their knowledge.” Panpan would have agreed with his assessment. Hamamura Shōko, a Kyoto woman, had a matter-of-fact
explanation: “If I’m going to be arrested even though I’m not fooling around with foreigners, I might as well try it.” Upon her release, she asked a woman she had met in the hospital to introduce
her to a foreigner. Sunose Katsuko learned enough as a patient
20. “‘Yoru no onna’ wo daikenkyo” [Big arrest of women of the night], Asahi
Shimbun, Jan. 30, 1946; “‘Yoru no onna’ sambyakumei kenkyo” [Arrest of 300 women
of the night], in ibid., March 11, 1946; Takahashi Kazuo, “Yami no onnatachi” [Women
of the night], in Ino Kenji, ed., Tokyo yamiichi kōbōshi.
21. Takahashi, “Yami no onnatachi,” 266.
22. See Koikari, The Pedagogy of Democracy, and Fujime Yuki, Sei no rekishigaku
[History of sex] (Tokyo, 1998).
23. The arrest of “innocent” women spurred the creation of the “Protect the
Women” organization in November 1946. See Koikari, The Pedagogy of Democracy, especially chapter 5.
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to give her the confidence to quit her poorly paid job in a dance
school for life on the streets.24
Hospitals were a well-known outpost of panpan society. Mizoguchi Kenji set a key scene there in his 1948 film Women of the
Night. The scene opens as a woman in a group of panpan swaggers
through the front doors of a hospital and announces to the male
guard, “I’m back, old man!” Such familiarity between hospital staff
and patients appears to have had a basis in reality. The Kanagawa
Shimbun exposed the freewheeling atmosphere of one hospital,
where police officers danced with patients, and men’s and women’s
laughter lasted into the night.25 Kanzaki Kiyoshi suggested that
hospitals served as a sort of haven from harassment in 1950, when
Tokyo streetwalkers got wind of an imminent catch and chose to
enter Yoshiwara Hospital for its duration.26 Given the earnings of
panpan, these women calculated the risk of arrest versus the costs
of convalescence and chose a hospital stay over leaving the streets
for other kinds of sex work.
These indiscriminate arrests did not necessarily reflect arrogance on the part of the occupying forces toward a defeated people. When it came to “protecting the troops,” the American public
and policymakers alike had disregarded the civil rights of American women throughout World War II. With the “amateur” in mind,
Congress passed the May Act in 1941, making prostitution “within
a reasonable distance” of military encampments on American soil
24. For the stories of Hamamura Shokō and Sunose Katsukō, see “Gaishō no
kōjutsusho,” 214–215 and 253, respectively. See Ōtsuka Tatsuo, “Gaishō tanjō” [Birth
of streetwalkers], in Takenaka and Sumiya, eds., Gaishō: jittai to sono shuki, 93–94. Fujime Yuki cited a report from Takenaka and Sumiya, eds., Gaishō, 254–255, to show
how the shame of forced examinations turned one virginal girl into a panpan. The
girl said that she was initially upset by the arrests and examinations, but the full quote
shows that other emotions quickly replaced shame, contrary to Fujime’s conclusions:
“What I had never seen until those two times in Heian Hospital was that everyone
wears beautiful clothes and does their makeup nicely. A strange feeling stirred inside
a little. So right after [I got out] I had a friend who wears western clothes to take me to
a party and introduce me to a certain foreigner.” Fujime, Sei no rekishigaku, 328–329.
25. For more on the exposé, see Izuoka, “Karikomi,” 131.
26. Kanzaki Kiyoshi, “Baishun torishimari jōrei ni tsuite” [Concerning the control regulations of prostitution], in Kanzaki Kiyoshi, Musume wo uru machi [Towns that
sell girls] (Tokyo 1954), 118; Nishida, Kichi no onna, 184; Kanzaki, “Gaishōron,” 217,
223; Yoshida Masashi, “Baishuntō torishimari jōrei to torishimari no kaiko” [Recollections of the regulations and control of prostitution], in Tōkyō-tō Minsei Kyoku Fujinbu
Fukushika, ed., Tōkyō-tō no fujin hogo [Women’s protection in Tokyo Metropolitan
Area] (Tokyo 1972), 19.
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a federal crime. The Federal Bureau of Investigation invoked the
act to arrest 331 women near Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and
Camp Forrest, Tennessee, in 1943. According to a Gallup poll,
U.S. citizens agreed that American women who engaged in casual
sex with military personnel deserved stiff fines and jail time. The
May Act thus served as a precedent for the “catches” in Occupied
Japan.27
Also in 1941, five religious organizations came together to
provide “wholesome recreational activities” and to “creat[e] the
right kind of leisure environment” for U.S. military personnel.
They founded the United Services Organization (USO), perhaps
best known for its long relationship with comedian Bob Hope.
From its inception, the USO aimed to deter casual prostitution.
Dr. Janet Fowler Nelson cut to the chase: “To be quite blunt, neither are venereal diseases contracted, nor babies conceived, on
the post. Nor by any stretch of the imagination can responsibility for the less happy aspects of sex in wartime be fairly assigned
only to the men in military service” (emphasis in original). The
Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) went on to recruit
hostesses and “vouched for and investigated [their] character and
integrity.”28 The USO was to be a Recreation and Amusement Association without sex.
These domestic policies, like the policies developed by SCAP
in cooperation with the Japanese, attempted to reduce sexually
transmitted disease among U.S. military personnel. U.S. military
brass knew disease was endemic and not unique to Japan. The U.S.
Navy reported that “venereal disease” accounted for more work
27. The May Act resembled World War I’s “pure zones” near camps. The act was
made permanent on May 15, 1946. For text of the May Act, see “The May Act is Made
Permanent,” Journal of Social Hygiene, 32 (1946), 228–229. For a report on the mass arrests, see “FBI Cleans Up Two Camps,” New York Times, Feb. 2, 1943, p. 17. For survey
results, see George Gallup, “The Gallup Poll,” Washington Post, April 10, 1943, p. 9. For
the history of sexually transmitted disease in the United States, see Allan M. Brandt, No
Magic Bullet: A Social History of Venereal Disease in the United States since 1880 (New York,
1985), and David J. Pivar, Purity and Hygiene: Women, Prostitution, and the “American Plan,”
1900–1930 (Westport, Conn., 2001). For examples of the discourse on the threat of female delinquency to war preparedness, see Joel T. Boone, “The Sexual Aspects of Military Personnel,” Journal of Social Hygiene, 27 (1941), 112–124.
28. For more on the USO, see Dr. Janet Fowler, “The Young Women’s Christian
Association Social Hygiene Program in the United Service Organizations,” Journal of
Social Hygiene, 29 (1943), 6–7, emphasis in original, and J. E. Bingham, “The Y.M.C.A.
and Social Hygiene in Wartime,” ibid., 5–6.
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days lost than any other ailment in twenty-five out of the forty-six
years since 1900 and that it placed second only to influenza in the
other years.29 During World War II, the rate soared. After seizing
the Philippines, MacArthur saw the rate of infection jump from
5 per 1,000 to 143 per 1,000 in six months, and this increase was but
a fraction of the rise in the European Theater. Over the two months
following V-E day, over 43,000 servicemen—“nearly the equivalent
of three full infantry divisions”—contracted a sexually transmitted
disease at a rate called “the highest in military history.”30
To reduce these rates, SCAP in Japan and Congress in the
United States implemented measures to control women’s sexuality.
The risk of arrest was greatest for women who dressed in provocative ways and socialized with troops out of doors. Pundits tried to
pinpoint what caused this “abnormal” behavior among women, but
they overlooked the biggest draw to the streets: money.
Economic power of panpan
Streetwalking paid more than a woman could earn in virtually any other occupation. Tokyo panpan could make upwards of
40,000 yen per month, compared to formal-sector employees who
took home an average of 2,200 yen for office work and even less for
factory work. The potential for steady high earnings made streetwalking an attractive choice in the midst of runaway inflation and
layoffs that targeted skilled and semi-skilled women workers.31
29. See “Panel Discussion: Mutual Responsibilities of the Community, the Armed
Forces, and the Serviceman,” Journal of Social Hygiene, 35 (1949), 195–217, esp. 201.
30. For an unusual American show of support for regulated prostitution, see
“How They Manage Some Things in Japan,” Los Angeles Times, Aug. 26, 1901, p. 6. For
prostitution in World War II Philippines, see John Boyd Coates and Ebbe Curtis Hoff,
Preventive Medicine in World War II, vol. 5: Communicable Diseases (9 vols., Washington,
D.C., 1955), especially chapter 10. For prostitution in war time and Occupied Europe,
see American Social Hygiene Association, “War Against Prostitution Must Go On,”
Journal of Social Hygiene, 32 (1946), 500–507, and Thomas H. Sternberg and Ernest B.
Howard, “Current Army Venereal Disease Rates,” in ibid., 530–544. See also Lindesay
Parrott, “Venereal Disease Reduced in Japan,” New York Times, July 25, 1946, p. 4.
31. Watanabe Yōji reported that in 1949 Kyoto panpan made an average of 14,570
yen, while in Tokyo they made from 26,700 to 40,000 yen per month. Panpan made
far more than other sex workers. Watanabe figured the gross earnings of the brothel
prostitute equaled the net revenue of panpan, and the average monthly pay for firstclass café “waitresses” and dancers came to just half of the take of panpan. Watanabe,
Gaishō, 145–146, 175–177, 118. See also Enokimoto Takashio, “Baishōfu no shakai
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Cash paid upfront appealed to panpan, as did the items soldiers bartered for sex. Panpan enjoyed access to material comforts
like silk stockings and chocolate. This access colored their relationships with other Japanese, including the police. A panpan in
Kyoto declared that the police were “Absolute beggars. All it takes
is for them to see your face and they start asking, ‘Hey! Got any
chocolate? Give me some cigarettes. Give me some soap!’”32 Conventional wisdom had it that army servicemen often paid for sex
with chocolate, canned goods, and trinkets. In the disappointed
words of a panpan new to the naval port of Yokosuka, “The army
has camps, so army personnel bring money and goods. The sailors
bring only cash.”33
Consumer items unavailable in Japan except at post exchanges made their way into black markets via panpan. Also appearing in black markets were the personal belongings of G.I.s
and sentimental gifts bestowed upon favorite panpan before the
G.I.s ended a tour of duty. During one tearful farewell, a young soldier thrust a wristwatch into a woman’s hand. Once he was gone,
she dried her eyes and wondered aloud to a friend how much the
watch would fetch on the black market.34 Payments in cash and in
kind left panpan flush with hard currency, giving them an edge
when searching for housing. In a complete reversal of pre-war conventions, homeowners now welcomed single women as boarders.
The housing market around Tachikawa air base in Tokyo
was described by resident and panpan advocate Nishida Minoru.
Nishida, an author of children’s books by profession, spent the
war working with youths in China on anti-opium projects. After he returned to Japan in 1946, he became an informal ally to
Tachikawa’s streetwalkers. His account, published in 1953, offers
an even-handed look at the lives of streetwalkers without the judgmental tone of his contemporaries like the scholars Sumiya Etsuji
and Watanabe Yōji.
eisei” [Social hygiene of prostitutes], in Takenaka and Sumiya, eds., Gaishō: jittai to
sono shuki.
32. See “Gaishō no kōjutsusho,” 232.
33. See Hara Masaki, “Ueno Ameyoko” [Ueno Ameyoko (area of Tokyo)], in Ino,
ed., Tōkyō yamiichi kōbōshi, 117, and Kanzaki Kiyoshi, “Yōshō no seitai” [Mode of life of
prostitutes who take foreign customers], in Kanzaki Kiyoshi, Sengo Nihon no baishun
mondai (Tokyo, 1954), 39.
34. See Nishida, Kichi no onna, 215–218.
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According to Nishida, panpan became favored tenants of
landlords. At first, only the poorest of residents, usually returnees
from mainland Asia or victims of war-time calamaties, would rent
to them, but from 1947 on, landlords moved in and began to cater
to the women’s needs. Signs plastered along the streets of residential neighborhoods proclaimed “Rooms Available: Young women
only.” These landlords turned away formerly sought-after “reputable” tenants like male students and salaried workers because panpan could pay higher rents.35
As an indicator of the economic power and autonomy of panpan, and wholly unlike the brothel prostitute who worked for a proprietor for several months, a year, or more, a panpan did not stay
anywhere for long. Short-term rentals suited her needs as she fluctuated between the roles of bataafurai and onrii, Japanized English
for “butterfly” and “only one.” The “butterfly” took many customers, while the “only” was mistress of one individual (although some
“onlies” took additional customers on the sly). The “butterfly” lived
in inns with other women. If she fought with the other tenants, she
moved. If she found a patron, she became an “only” and moved into
private rooms. When a relationship ended, the “only” returned to
an inn to work as a “butterfly” until she could find another patron.36
Innkeepers had no choice but to accept mobility as a feature
of the market. It was impossible to impose long-term financial obligations on women who, without a legal or familial imperative to
stay put, might suddenly disappear. In the words of Takenaka Katsuo, coeditor of a study of streetwalkers with economic historian
Sumiya Etsuji: “[Panpan] have no overseers or bosses who press
them for cash or oppress them with status (mibunteki) obligations.
They are alone but they are free. They have a workplace, which,
though insecure, allows them to keep all of their earnings.”37 With
plenty of money and bound by no obligations to family or employers, panpan dissatisfied with a situation could simply move. This
was a privilege few women enjoyed.
35. In 1948 landlords took 2,000–2,500 yen per month from panpan tenants. See
ibid., 23, 34, 78. See also Watanabe, Gaishō, 182.
36. According to Watanabe’s survey, only 20 percent of panpan lived in one place
for more than six months; Watanabe, Gaishō, 183. For “butterfly” and “only” distinction, see Nishida, Kichi no onna, 59–60.
37. See Takenaka Katsuo, “Gaishō no chōsa ni tsuite” [Concerning the survey of
streetwalkers], in Takenaka and Sumiya, eds., Gaishō: jittai to sono shuki, 8.
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New roles as panpan
Like the Japanese general public polled in a 1949 national
survey, scholars compared streetwalkers to brothel prostitutes and
found them lacking.38 Sumiya Etsuji wrote:
Compared to the panpan, the character of the brothel prostitute is generally docile, feudal and submissive. Her moral consciousness comes from
business instinct and thus is very low; however, it is not as low as the moral
consciousness of she who also sells her chastity, the panpan. The lack of
inhibition and beastliness of the panpan are almost never found in the
brothel prostitute.39
Sumiya acknowledged that panpan had much in common with
“normal women” because they enjoyed the benefits of education.
Nevertheless, the combination of education and outrageous behavior put panpan in a “third” category all their own.
Sumiya backed his thesis with examples that left him deeply
troubled. He came into contact with prostitutes held in Kyoto’s Heian Hospital. He offered one of them as an example of a woman
who transgressed the categories of the “normal woman” and the
“illiterate, feudal, and docile” brothel prostitute: One day the
woman hung from her window and bellowed like Tarzan, pleased
with herself. On another occasion, Sumiya passed a group of panpan who paid him and his colleagues no mind, continuing to eat
snacks and tell coarse stories while lying on the floor, something
“of course you’d never seen normal women or even brothel prostitutes do.” What bothered him most was that panpan denied him
the respect he had come to expect from women. Sumiya called
their “bad manners” a lack of shame and diagnosed their indifference to his status a consequence of postwar conditions.40
Data corroborate the perception that streetwalkers were unlike brothel prostitutes. They appear to have come from different backgrounds: In the late 1940s only 10 percent of all Japanese
women (and 9 percent of brothel prostitutes) graduated from
38. Kokuritsu Yoron Chōsajo, ed., Fūki ni kansuru seron chōsa, cited in note 1,
found that 51 percent of respondents had a negative opinion of panpan, compared to
only 27 percent for brothel prostitutes.
39. See Sumiya Etsuji, “Meiro” [Superstitions], in Takenaka and Sumiya, eds.,
Gaishō: jittai to sono shuki, 24. For more on popular attitudes towards panpan, see
Kovner, “Base Cultures.” 40. See Sumiya, “Meiro,” 24–27.
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women’s higher schools, but one-third of streetwalkers had done
so or had attained a higher degree. Also suggestive of the relatively
comfortable upbringings of panpan, just half of streetwalkers cited
“economic hardship” as the reason they entered the trade, compared to 72 percent of brothel prostitutes.41
Another 22 percent of panpan summarized their motivations
with the word yakekuso, or desperation, which usually meant discord at home. The streets were absorbing victims of a new kind
of poverty: women estranged from their families. Panpan in Tokyo
reported that they had taken up life on the streets without the consent of their parents or relatives, often after a quarrel. Morishita
had run away after a fight about dating a Japanese postal worker.
One can imagine a woman like her telling Nishida that she liked
foreigners because “they didn’t know the language and couldn’t
tell other Japanese what [she] was up to.” The separation of panpan
from their families contrasted sharply with women working in the
pleasure quarters, where brothels continued to provide a last resort for families, rather than individual women, in need.42
The emphasis on motivations in these studies obscures the
reality that the Occupation was a time of hardship even for what
Sumiya called “normal women.” The war permanently displaced
many Japanese who had previously enjoyed comfortable lives. The
death of a breadwinning husband or father could plunge a financially solvent family into poverty. These crises had grave implications for teenaged daughters. Both panpan and brothel prostitutes
were far more likely than the average Japanese woman to come
from single-parent homes.43 Regardless of how they articulated
their circumstances, few prostitutes came from families untouched
by war.
On the streets, panpan answered to no male authority. Autonomy was unusual for women workers and a significant development in the history of Japanese prostitution and labor. Proprietors
had firm control over the earnings of brothel prostitutes. While
seemingly independent waitresses in pre-war Japan might have negotiated with customers, bar managers usually took a cut of their
41. See Enokimoto, “Baishōfu no shakai eisei,” 41–43.
42. For more on yakekuso, see Watanabe, Gaishō, 90–95; for Nishida’s conversation, see Nishida, Kichi no onna, 154–155. For the classic overview of indentured prostitution, see Maki Hidemasa, Jinshin baibai [Selling of people] (Tokyo, 1969).
43. For figures and analysis, see Enokimoto, “Baishōfu no shakai eisei,” 41–44.
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earnings directly or through a system of punitive fines.44 No formal system bound panpan to kick back a percentage of their earnings to pimps or panpan house operators in the first half of the
Occupation.
Several factors made the autonomy of panpan possible. Organization was key. Panpan formed gangs according to location and
whether they took Japanese or foreign customers. These gangs resembled criminal syndicates (yakuza). Concepts central to criminal
syndicates, such as turf (nawabari) and justice (jingi), governed the
conduct of women members as well. Panpan members concerned
themselves with internal discipline and relations with neighboring gangs. Like the oyabun (senior member or father figure) of
the underworld, a charismatic veteran called anego (elder sister)
served as leader. Tachikawa-area gangs had ties to authorities.
In one remarkable case documented with photos by Nishida, the
fire and police departments hosted a reconciliation ceremony between feuding gangs. Eight hundred panpan came to a local theater to hear eighteen anego from the “North” and “South” promise
“Henceforth, let’s not engage in turf wars. Let’s get along and be
good citizens.”45
Departing from the practices of pimps and yakuza bosses,
anego did not dictate a gang member’s daily activities nor demand
a cut of a panpan’s pay, require her to work at certain times, or accept all comers. Panpan gang members were free to set their own
terms and to keep all of their earnings. Privileges like these were
unimaginable for women working and living in brothels, who
rarely possessed the right to handle money or to refuse customers.
A conversation retold by Nishida underscores the importance of cooperation and communication among panpan—the
ever-present threat of violence. According to his informant, word
spread quickly when a panpan discovered a G.I. had a sexually
transmitted disease. Soon no one would accept the serviceman as
44. For more on café waitress work, see Elise K. Tipton, “The Café: Contested
Space of Modernity in Interwar Japan,” in Elise K. Tipton and John Clark, eds., Being Modern in Japan: Culture and Society from the 1910s to the 1930s (Honolulu, 2000),
119–136.
45. Many commentators made this connection. See Minami Hiroshi (moderator) et al., “Panpan no sekai” [The world of the panpan], Kaizō, 30 (Dec. 1949) 74–87;
Kanzaki, “Gaishōron,” 221; and Michael Molasky, The American Occupation of Japan and
Okinawa: Literature and Memory (London, 1999), 111. For discussion of the dispute and
for the photo, see Nishida, Kichi no onna, 136–137.
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a customer. It was these frustrated G.I.s, she hinted, who resorted
to rape to satisfy themselves.46
Calls to the Japanese police were futile. A police officer identified as “O” was notorious for the way he treated the women he arrested. Preceding him was a reputation for entering the residences
of panpan in an imperious manner—by walking on tatami mats in
his boots, purposely breaking glass, and blowing his harmonica
unnecessarily.47 Darker stories circulated that he let women go
who had sex with him and harassed those who refused. One streetwalker reported that another officer told her, “There’s no reason
for us not to kill one or two of you.”48
Not only did panpan face violence from customers and police,
but they also risked attacks from each other. Gangs enforced codes
of conduct with ritualized abuse called “lynching.” “Gate of the
Flesh,” a popular 1947 short story later made into a film, depicted
the violence that women suffered when comrades got wind of their
intention to leave the street trade.49 The final scene of Mizoguchi’s
Women of the Night is an extended, graphic representation of this
kind of violence. Such fictional accounts must have been fresh in
the minds of panpan who participated in a popular magazine’s
roundtable discussion in 1949. Panpan vehemently denied that
such violence was a part of their world. “Our hope is that women
can leave this world as soon as possible,” said one woman. However, before the subject was dropped, another panpan conceded,
“There are some cases when we administer discipline, but never
for those who don’t deserve it.”50 Organization offered women a
degree of protection from forces working upon them as a group,
but it also provided them with a way to brutalize one another for
real and imagined slights.
Panpan did possess a monopoly on one resource sought after
by reporters and scholars: information about their lives and backgrounds. Panpan leveraged this resource to their advantage, for
they had extensive experience dealings with authorities, unlike
brothel prostitutes who had limited contact with the world outside
the brothel and its customers. Panpan had to deal not only with
46. See Nishida, Kichi no onna, 111.
47. See “Gaishō no kōjutsushō,” 223–224.
48. Minami et al., “Panpan no sekai,” 79.
49. For analysis of “Gate of the Flesh,” see Molasky, The American Occupation, 112.
50. See Minami et al., “Panpan no sekai,” 78.
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customers and innkeepers, but also with the military police, the
Japanese police, and the journalists and researchers who pursued
them. Aware of the conflicts of interests that motivated these contingents, panpan became adept negotiators.
Contemporary news reports and scholarly studies inadvertently reveal the care with which women managed their relationships with men. This discretion frustrated researchers. Sociologist
Watanabe Yōji complained: “How can researchers who have neither authority nor power get reliable data from streetwalkers who
calmly give false statements even to the police?” Indeed, panpan
acknowledged that they had a deep distrust of authority, believing
that the police asked intrusive questions to satisfy idle curiosity or
to pass time: “The police say, ‘I’ll let you go if you tell me the truth
about everything.’ Women who are unaccustomed to the questioning end up telling the truth. But once you get accustomed [to it],
you know that’s what the police always say, so you become shrewd
about what to tell them.”51
Sumiya Etsuji acknowledged, “Women aren’t going to disclose more than is in their interest,” but Watanabe tried very
hard to make it in the interests of patients of Tokyo’s Yoshiwara
Hospital to give him information. He announced to an assembly
of panpan:
After this, the people here are going to ask you various questions and
record your answers on these forms. Please take care so that absolutely
nothing but the truth is written down. If you say something untruthful,
it will only be bad for you, so beware. This form is designed to reveal
any lies at once. We will also check your answers with other materials,
so we will catch your lies right away. If you tell the truth, we won’t take
you to a faraway island, and we won’t contact your family. Of course, we
will not release your name. But if you don’t tell us the truth, I don’t know
what will happen. . . . You understand what I’m saying, don’t you? Get it
through your head.
Even a threat to contact family members, dreaded by panpan since
many had often fallen out with their relatives, could not persuade
the women of the importance of Watanabe or his work. He received a great deal of useless data and guessed correctly what the
panpan thought of him: “Another idiot from the university.”52
51. See ibid., 79.
52. See Watanabe, Gaishō, 24–31, and Sumiya, “Meiro,” 15.
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Panpan also asserted themselves when dealing with American
authorities. In recounting the story of “Teruko” who stood up to a
serviceman named “Tommy,” Kanzaki Kiyoshi illustrated the woman’s skills as a negotiator. Teruko demanded that Tommy seek professional help for his bed-wetting. When Tommy attacked Teruko,
took her clothes, and returned to his quarters on the base, Teruko
approached a military police and succeeded in having Tommy
return her belongings. Women like Teruko appear to have been
capable of confronting the U.S. military when their rights were
violated.53
Communication with Americans contributed to the ability of
panpan to maintain autonomy from pimps. Panpan told Nishida a
colorful story about how they outwitted pimps for control of the
streets of Tachikawa. Would-be pimps demanded that streetwalkers hand over a percentage of their earnings. When they refused to
comply, the men retaliated by spreading rumors among G.I.s that
certain panpan suffered from tuberculosis or sexually transmitted
diseases. Panpan claim to have countered the slander by using tattoos. A woman would tattoo or carve her own initials and those of
a favored G.I. on her arm or thigh and, at an opportune moment,
reveal the initials to her target and melt his heart. Once the relationship cooled, she carved a new set elsewhere on her body or
reused the originals, telling new targets that she had misspelled a
name. The ruse worked.54
The story suggests that wiles like carving tattoos and skills like
English proficiency facilitated direct communication between panpan and U.S. servicemen, who likely preferred flirting with women
to dealing with middlemen, as was Japanese custom. That was how
G.I.s approached women in the United States, judging from the
fears of “amateurs” and “pick-ups” circulating during and after
the war. Studies show that pimps (himo) failed to corner the street
trade. Women claimed they accepted customers from male pimps
53. Kanzaki gave these pseudonyms to the man and woman in Kanzaki Kiyoshi,
“Maketeinai onna” [A woman not defeated], in Kanzaki, Yoru no kichi, 92. In another
example, Hirai Kazuko and Hayakawa Noriyo described “the lady Matsumoto,” an informal problem solver called when trouble arose in the resort town Atami. Although
her background is uncertain, Hayakawa’s research suggests that Matsumoto had
worked as a dancer. She had exceptional English skills. See Hirai, “RAA to akasen,”
100, and Hayakawa, “Senryōgun heishi,” 61.
54. See Nishida, Kichi no onna, 28–30.
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only when a refusal might lead to violence. A 1949 survey of Kyoto
streetwalkers revealed that only three of 197 panpan worked for a
pimp, one for a man and two for a woman.55
The beginnings of regulation
In 1948 Japan regained considerable authority over its domestic affairs. Communities started to criminalize solicitation,
beginning the demise of the street trade. Miyagi prefecture led
the way in July. Sendai, its prefectural seat, was home to the 11th
Airborne Division and an estimated 3,000 panpan.56 By 1956 twelve
prefectures and dozens of municipalites had enacted regulations
that fined or imprisoned women convicted of solicitation.57 Antiprostitution legislation was first introduced to the postwar Diet in
1948. It failed to draw much support at first but passed in modified
form as the Prostitution Prevention Law in 1956. This law outlawed
brothel prostitution, criminizalied solitication across Japan, and
provided some rehabilitative measures for prostitutes to transition
into mainstream occupations. The story of the law has a central
place in the history of prostitution and women, but an exclusive
focus on this piece of legislation obscures the many incremental
legal changes that reduced the autonomy of street prostitutes and
changed the nature of commercial sex after 1945.
During the U.S. Occupation, the salient distinction was between prostitutes who worked out of sight for proprietors and those
who worked in public view. The proliferation of local regulations
stemmed from a general desire to rein in the latter, which was
sometimes called “scattered” prostitution (sanshō). According to the
1949 national survey, only 25 percent of respondents wanted to ban
the pleasure quarters, but the figure rose to 77 percent for streetwalking.58 Had the public known the extent to which American
55. Panpan told Nishida that they arranged their own affairs and reported that
they dealt with pimps only when a refusal might lead to violence; see ibid., 28–30. For
more on pimps, see Watanabe, Gaishō, 152, 210, and Sumiya and Takenaka, Gaishō: jittai to sono shuki, 164–165.
56. Fujino, Sei no kokka kanri, 194, 201; Tanabe, “Baishōfu,” 128; Watanabe,
Gaishō, 228.
57. For more on these two pieces of legislation, see Fujino, Sei no kokka kanri,
and Nagai Yoshikazu, Fūzoku eigyō torishimari [Regulation of adult entertainment businesses] (Tokyo, 2002).
58. See Kokuritsu Yoron Chōsajo, ed., Fūki ni kansuru seron chōsa, 1–2.
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and Japanese authorities were cooperating to operate and regulate
brothels in pleasure quarters for U.S. servicemen, the Japanese in
1949 would likely have been pleased and asked for even more cooperation. The trend toward local regulation began long before
the outbreak of the Korean War, which has been seen as a turning
point in Japanese-American efforts to manage sex.59
Although anti-prostitution legislation failed to pass, the Diet
enacted other bills that targeted panpan and brought a semblance
of order to the burgeoning sex industry in 1948. Under the rubric
of “public health,” the Sexually Transmitted Disease Prevention
Act (Seibyō Yobō Hō) called for the incarceration and compulsory
medical examination of women “strongly suspected of habitual prostitution.” The Adult Entertainment Law (Fūzoku Eigyō Torishimari
Hō) reinforced the convention that sex belonged indoors and out of
sight—a convention that panpan flouted. The law created licensing
for the many kinds of sexually explicit entertainment new to the era,
delineating entertainment inappropriate for children. As Nagai Yoshikazu argued in his book on the law, distinguishing children from
adults was new to public morals discourse. Anti-panpan activists embraced the distinction and invoked the innocence of children to
persuade the public to turn against unfettered street prostitution.60
Until panpan appeared in the streets in 1945, most prostitution
took place in neighborhoods most women had no reason to enter.
During the Occupation, vendors of sex encroached upon areas previously free of prostitution without regard for the presence of family residences or children. As everyday life regained a semblance of
normality, panpan experienced a backlash. According to the 1949
“Survey Concerning Public Morals,” citizens’ disgust with panpan
was rooted in terms of harm to children’s moral development:
[The panpans’] attire and attitude cause far stronger antipathy than
what was expressed toward brothel prostitutes in the survey. In particular, people think the panpans’ showy makeup and attitude, kinky permed
hair and garish dress are eyesores, and that their walking brazenly on the
streets has a bad influence on virtuous children.61
59. Niigata and Miyagi prefectures enacted the first regulations concerning
streetwalkers in 1948. As early as 1946 Japanese began to press for policy responses to
streetwalkers. See Koikari, The Pedagogy of Democracy, 179–181.
60. Nagai, F ūzoku eigyō torishimari, argued that child welfare was a prime motivator for the Adult Entertainment Law.
61. For the survey, see Kokuritsu Yoron Chōsajo, ed., Fūki ni kansuru seron chōsa.
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The alarm—and expressions of alarm—grew after the Occupation ended. Educators and mothers claimed to see the effects of
exposure to panpan in children’s thinking, speech, and play.62 One
elementary school teacher asked her students what they wanted to
be when they grew up. Horrified, she reported that the girls responded in unison: “Americans’ girls.”63
In the late 1940s children’s rights rhetoric became a formidable weapon in the arsenal of opponents of street prostitution.64
Anti-prostitution activists and critics of U.S. military power seized
upon “child welfare” to blast the atmosphere of base towns and the
panpan, both of which, they charged, infringed upon the rights of
the child. The elevation of the child in public discourse reflected
the optimism of the postwar moment, a result of the popular Child
Welfare Law (1947) and the promotion of children’s rights by the
new Women and Minors Bureau. Activists who worked to rid their
streets of panpan drew on the language of the Children’s Charter, issued in 1951 by a government-affiliated group. The charter
proclaimed twelve basic rights of the Japanese child, among them
“the right to be raised in a sound environment.” Such an environment at the time implied freedom from sexual sights and sounds.
Kanzaki raised the alarm over the potential consequences of such
exposure by citing elementary school students’ replies to the question “What did your mother say when you got something from an
American soldier?” He reported that 80 percent of mothers said,
“Good for you,” and 10 percent gave their children the practical
advice to “go get more.”65
Also promoting children’s rights were local branches of the
Parent Teacher Association (PTA), an organization introduced
by the American occupiers. Local PTAs played a major role in
the push against street prostitution on both sides of the Pacific
and may be seen as part of the Cold War containment culture
62. See Tachigi Etsurō, “Gaishō no machi ni tatakau” [Fighting the streetwalker
towns], in Inomata Kōzō, Kimura Kihachirō, and Shimizu Ikutarō, eds., Kichi Nihon
(Tokyo, 1953), 96–97, and Kanzaki, “Kichi no fuhai sayō” [How bases decay], in Kanzaki, Sengo Nihon, 57.
63. Reported in ibid.
64. By contrast, Hirai Kazuko highlighted the importance of the Korean War to
shaping Japan’s prostitution policy; see Hirai, “Sei de minaosu.”
65. For more on the Children’s Charter, see Kanazawa Kiichi, Jidō Kenshō Kaisetsu
[Explanation of Children’s Charter] (1951; Tokyo, 1988). See also Kanzaki, “Kichi no
fuhai sayō,” 57–58.
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described by Mire Koikari.66 Japanese and American PTAs believed that “sex hygiene” education for children was a duty shared
by parents and teachers. The Japanese did not simply copy the
American model, however. American PTAs feared that schoolgirls
left to their own devices would engage in casual sexual relations
with U.S. servicemen. Japanese PTAs, on the other hand, focused
on removing panpan and carousing soldiers from places where
schoolchildren congregated.67 This difference suggests that cracks
in containment culture were present from the start, as the interests
of Japanese citizens diverged from U.S. foreign policy goals.
Like the PTAs, educators took a critical stance toward the
effects of American military power in their communities. The Japan Teachers’ Union organized the Protect the Children Association in April 1952 with the mission of enforcing the Children’s
Charter.68 PTAs and teachers organized campaigns to “clean up
[joˉ ka]” areas frequented by children, starting in 1951.69 In Tachikawa, high school students led a movement to clean up the area
around their school. The base commander cooperated by prohibiting military personnel from going out after 11 p.m., and police
66. See Koikari, The Pedagogy of Democracy.
67. For more on U.S. PTAs, see “Sex Hygiene Termed a Parent-Teacher Duty,”
Washington Post, Nov. 24, 1943, p. B1, and Mayola S. Center, “Social Hygiene: A ParentTeacher Obligation,” Journal of Social Hygiene, 33 (1947), 333–335. For more on PTAs
in Japan, see Jacob van Staavern, “The Growth of Parent-Teacher Associations in Japan: A Prefectural View,” Peabody Journal of Education, 27 (1949), 162–166. Despite
the concerns they shared to a degree, Japanese and American mothers never acted
together on prostitution. Japanese tried to interest Americans in the problems of Japan’s base towns, but Americans tended to dismiss prostitution as a Japanese custom,
and U.S. newspapers claimed reports of American misbehavior were exaggerated by
leftist agitators. Eleanor Roosevelt on her visit to Japan also dismissed the extent of
the phenomenon. See Ichikawa Fusae et al., “Zadankai: baishun boshihō seitei no tōji
wo kaerimite, genzai no mondaiten wo saguru” [Roundtable: Looking back on the
time of enactment of the Prostitution Prevention Law, considering today’s problems],
in Tōkyō-tō Minsei Kyoku Fujinbu Fukushika, ed., Tōkyō-tō no fujin hogo (Tokyo, 1973),
30–32, and Fujita Fumiko, “Eleanor Roosevelt’s 1953 visit to Japan: American values
and Japanese response,” European Contributions to American Studies, 38 (Amsterdam,
1997), 310–316.
68. For more on the Protect the Children Association, see Keiō Gijuku Daigaku
Shakai Jigyō Kenkyōkai, ed., Gaishō to kodomotachi [Streetwalkers and children] (1953;
Tokyo, 1998), 62–67.
69. See Kanzaki Kiyoshi, “Gunji kichi no fōki mondai” [Problem of public morals at military bases], in Kanzaki, Sengo Nihon, 95, and Tachigi, “Gaishō no machi,” 101.
Hirai noted that the Atami PTA was an anomaly in that it did not castigate women
working in entertainment. See Hirai, “RAA to akasen,” 109.
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enforced regulations that kept streetwalkers from congregating
at Tachikawa station. Children on their way to school were, for a
time, no longer subject to the sight of loitering women.70 Using the
language of child welfare and the rights of the child, mothers and
teachers criticized Japanese accommodation of American military
sexual “needs.”
Hirai Kazuko has shown that the Korean War strengthened
cooperation between the U.S. military and Japanese authorities
in organizing brothels and testing prostitutes for disease. In addition, Japanese citizens were not passive in the face of increasing
base town prostitution or U.S. military might. Japanese citizens
too pushed for more regulation of street prostitution, which was
partially realized as early as 1948 in some locales. The push intensified after 1951.
The Security Treaty between the United States and Japan
was signed on September 8, 1951. Aside from the visibility of panpan, many problems simmered under the surface. The Security
Treaty left Japanese residents with conflicting emotions about
the more than 700 permanent U.S. military installations on sovereign Japanese soil. Common complaints included damage to
fishing grounds, noise pollution, and the requisitioning of agricultural land.
Criticism of the United States began in earnest after the Occupation ended, which in part explains the surge in publications
about base town prostitution in the early 1950s. One Women and
Minors Bureau official explained, “We felt like we couldn’t openly
make a fuss about the prostitution problem until after the signing
of the Peace Treaty.” Tokyo University president Yanaihara Tadao
made up for lost time. In a 1952 speech, he stated that the effect
of base town prostitution was “no less than that of the destructive
power of the A-bomb.” Language like that would not have been
possible during the Occupation.71
70. See Nishida, Kichi no onna, 120; Kanzaki, “Tachiagaru seinen” [Rising
youths], in Kanzaki, Sengo Nihon, 106–107; and Okada Hideko, “Moeru idosui” [Burning well water], in Inomata, Kimura, and Shimizu, eds., Kichi Nihon, 38, 42, 75. Resistance welled up among some residents of base towns like Tachikawa and Yokosuka.
Both towns had grown alongside the Japanese military before and during the war.
Prosperity depended on providing services to military personnel, first Japanese and
later American.
71. For publications on base town prostitution in the 1950s, see Molasky, The
American Occupation of Japan. See Ichikawa et al., “Zadankai,” 26–27, and Yanaihara
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Japanese citizens described the relationship between the
United States and Japan using the term “colonial.” Diet member
Kimura Kihachirō claimed that Japan faced the fate imposed on
mainland Asia by Japan a generation before: rule by a foreign
power.72 The introduction to Children of the Bases (1953), a collection of essays written by young children about their exposure
to panpan and sex, lamented that Japan, which had long looked
down on the rest of Asia, was sinking into a “colonial condition”
just as the peoples of Asia were throwing off the yoke of colonial
rule.73
A second use of “colonial” indicted the behavior of Japanese
citizens. Memories of Japanese imperial endeavors were fresh in
the minds of many who used and heard this term. As early as 1948,
Ōtsuka Tatsuo described panpan as “fully enjoying the transformation into superficial colonial beauties.” Nishida was troubled by
children who pestered G.I.s for chocolate and by adults who felt
that “there is something to be gained from associating with foreigners.” Indeed, as Sarah Kovner noted, many Japanese business
owners in base towns did rely on foreigners for their livelihoods.74
A Keiō University study group despaired of the reactions of schoolchildren to streetwalkers and called the desire to walk with foreigners or speak English “colonial envy.”75
Panpan were a visual reminder of the unequal relationship
between the United States and Japan. The demands of citizens
uncomfortable with the nature of Japan’s relationship with the
United States forced them from the streets and into brothels. Like
panpan who created a realm of their own, Japanese citizens in turn
created a space within containment culture to criticize the U.S.Japanese alliance.
Tadao, quoted in Yuki Tanaka, Japan’s Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution
during World War II and the U.S. Occupation (London, 2002), 165.
72. Kimura Kihachirō was at the time a member of the Labor-Farmer party. See
Kimura Kihachirō, “Kichi keizai no mondaiten” [Problems of base economy], in Inomata, Kimura, and Shimizu, eds., Kichi Nihon, 245–246.
73. The colonial analogy is described in Kanzaki, “Baishun toshi Yokosuka”
[Prostitution city Yokosuka], in Kanzaki, Sengo Nihon, 21–31, and Shimizu Ikutarō, Miyahara Seiichi, and Ueda Shōsaburō, eds., Kichi no ko [Children of the bases] (Tokyo,
1953), 4. For one perspective on Kichi no ko, see Kovner, “Base Cultures.”
74. See Kovner, “Base Cultures.”
75. See Ōtsuka, “Gaishō tanjō,” 93; Nishida, Kichi no onna, 22; and Keio, Gaishoˉ to
kodomotachi, 25–27.
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Conclusion
Focusing on politics and policy sheds light on the ways that
SCAP, along with Japanese authorities, controlled the sexuality of
Japanese women, but it obscures the fact that panpan built a vast
market and a society of their own in spite of policy. The conclusion
that SCAP controlled women’s sexuality belies the voices of prostitutes found even in the records produced by authorities. To be
sure, SCAP and Japanese authorities did work to manage the sexuality of individual Japanese women. Critiques of this collaboration
necessarily highlight the costs to the individual, but individuals
did not work and live alone. Panpan worked with other women.
Framing panpan in terms of organization brings us closer to how
panpan saw their lives and work. They formed communities that
they themselves managed. In this way, the street trade contrasts
sharply with the parallel trade run out of brothels under the management of proprietors.
Analysis of violence against women lies beyond the scope of
this study of how women created and ran a market of their own.
Panpan faced arrest, incarceration, and forced medical exams, like
all Japanese women deemed suspect in the eyes of authorities. In
addition to this structural violence imposed by the Occupation,
panpan suffered rape and assault from customers and rogue police. Nonetheless, these risks did not stop women from forming a
street market. The threat of violence might even have given women
an incentive to cooperate with each other.
Ironically, another type of cooperation by women ended
panpan’s autonomy. Japanese teachers and mothers led the way
under the banner of the PTA and other civic groups. After 1952
anti-Americanism inflected their calls to ban panpan. While the
U.S. military factored in Japanese domestic discourse about prostitution, it did not drive policy toward prostitution in Japan in the
1950s. First as economic actors and then as protesters, Japanese
women themselves had a profound impact on the geography of
prostitution after 1945.
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